Moral Anti-Realism

It might be expected that it would suffice for the entry for
“moral anti-realism” to contain only some links to other
entries in this encyclopedia. It could contain a link to “moral
realism” and stipulate the negation of the view there
described. Alternatively, it could have links to the entries
“anti-realism” and “morality” and could
stipulate the conjunction of the materials contained therein. The fact
that neither of these approaches would be adequate—and, more
strikingly, that following the two procedures would yield
substantively non-equivalent results—reveals the contentious and
unsettled nature of the topic.

“Anti-realism,” “non-realism,” and
“irrealism” may for most purposes be treated as
synonymous. Occasionally, distinctions have been suggested for local
pedagogic reasons (see, e.g., Wright 1988a; Dreier 2004), but
no such distinction has generally taken
hold. (“Quasi-realism” denotes something very different,
to be discussed in the supplement
Projectivism and quasi-realism
below.) All three terms are to be defined in opposition to realism,
but since there is no consensus on how “realism” is to be
understood, “anti-realism” fares no better. Crispin Wright
(1992: 1) comments that “if there ever was a consensus of
understanding about ‘realism’, as a philosophical term of
art, it has undoubtedly been fragmented by the pressures exerted by
the various debates—so much so that a philosopher who asserts
that she is a realist about theoretical science, for example, or
ethics, has probably, for most philosophical audiences, accomplished
little more than to clear her throat.” This entry doesn't purport to do
justice to the intricacy and subtlety of the topic of realism; it
should be acknowledged at the outset that the fragmentation of which
Wright speaks
renders it unlikely that the label “moral anti-realism”
even succeeds in picking out a definite position. Yet perhaps we can
at least make an advance on clearing our throats.

Traditionally, to hold a realist position with respect to X
is to hold that X exists in a mind-independent manner (in the
relevant sense of “mind-independence”). On this view,
moral anti-realism is the denial of the thesis that moral
properties—or facts, objects, relations, events, etc. (whatever
categories one is willing to countenance)—exist
mind-independently. This could involve either (1) the denial that
moral properties exist at all, or (2) the acceptance that they do
exist but that existence is (in the relevant sense)
mind-dependent. Barring various complications to be discussed below,
there are broadly two ways of endorsing (1): moral noncognitivism and
moral error theory. Proponents of (2) may be variously thought of as
moral non-ojectivists, or idealists, or constructivists. Using such
labels is not a precise science, nor an uncontroversial matter; here
they are employed just to situate ourselves roughly. In this spirit of
preliminary imprecision, these views can be initially characterized as
follows:

Moral noncognitivism holds that our moral judgments
are not in the business of aiming at truth. So, for example, A.J. Ayer
declared that when we say “Stealing money is wrong” we do
not express a proposition that can be true or false, but rather it is
as if we say “Stealing money!!” with the tone of
voice indicating that a special feeling of disapproval is being
expressed (Ayer [1936] 1971: 110). Note how the predicate
“…is wrong” has disappeared in Ayer's translation
schema; thus the issues of whether the property of wrongness exists,
and whether that existence is mind-dependent, also disappear.

The moral error theorist thinks that although our
moral judgments aim at the truth, they systematically fail to secure
it. The moral error theorist stands to morality as the atheist stands
to religion. Noncognitivism regarding theistic discourse is not very
plausible (though see Lovin 2005); rather, it would seem that when a
theist says “God exists” (for example) she is expressing
something that purports to be true. According to the atheist, however,
the claim is untrue; indeed, according to her, theistic discourse in
general is infected with error. The moral error theorist claims that
when we say “Stealing is wrong” we are asserting that the
act of stealing instantiates the property of wrongness, but in fact
nothing instantiates this property (or there is no such property at
all), and thus the utterance is untrue. (Why say “untrue”
rather than “false”? See section 4 below.) Indeed,
according to her, moral discourse in general is infected with
error.

Non-objectivism (as it will be called here) allows that
moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be
specified, constituted by mental activity. The slogan version
comes from Hamlet: “there is nothing either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so.” Of course, the notion of
“mind-independence” is problematically indeterminate:
Something may be mind-independent in one sense and mind-dependent in
another. Cars, for example, are designed and constructed by creatures
with minds, and yet in another sense cars are clearly concrete,
non-subjective entities. Much careful disambiguation is needed before
we know how to circumscribe non-objectivism, and different philosophers
disambiguate differently. Many philosophers question whether the
“non-objectivism clause” is a useful component of moral
anti-realism at all. Many advocate views according to which moral
properties are significantly mind-dependent but which they are loath
to characterize as versions of moral anti-realism. There is a concern
that including the non-objectivism clause threatens to make moral
anti-realism trivially true, since there is little room for doubting
that the moral status of actions usually (if not always) depends
in some manner on mental phenomena such as the intentions
with which the action was performed or the episodes or pleasure and
pain that ensue from it. The issue will be discussed below, with no
pretense made of settling the matter one way or the other.

[The present discussion uses the label
“non-objectivism” instead of the simple
“subjectivism” since there is an entrenched usage in
metaethics for using the latter to denote the thesis that in making a
moral judgment one is reporting (as opposed to expressing) one's own
mental attitudes (e.g., “Stealing is wrong” means “I
disapprove of stealing”). So understood, subjectivism is a kind
of non-objectivist theory, but, as we shall see below, there are many
other kinds of non-objectivist theory, too.]

As a first approximation, then, moral anti-realism can be identified
as the disjunction of three theses:

moral noncognivitism

moral error theory

moral non-objectivism

One question that has exercised certain philosophers is whether
realism (and thus anti-realism) should be understood as a metaphysical
or as a linguistic thesis. (See Devitt 1991 and Dummett 1978 for
advocacy of the respective viewpoints.) The “traditional
view,” as initially expressed above, makes the matter solidly
metaphysical: It concerns existence and the ontological status of that
existence. But when the traditional terms of the debate were drawn up,
philosophers did not have in mind 20th-century complications such as
noncognitivism, which is usually defined as a thesis about moral
language. Thus, most contemporary ways of drawing the distinction
between moral realism and moral anti-realism begin with linguistic
distinctions: It is first asked “Is moral discourse
assertoric?” or “Are moral judgments truth apt?” It
is not clear that starting with linguistic matters is substantively at
odds with seeing the realism/anti-realism distinction as a
metaphysical division. After all, if one endorses a noncognitivist
view of moral language, it becomes hard to motivate the metaphysical
view that moral properties (facts, etc.) exist. The resulting
combination of theses, even if consistent, would be pretty
eccentric. It may even be argued that noncognitivism implies
that moral properties do not exist: The noncognitivist may hold that
even to wonder “Does moral wrongness exist?” is to betray
conceptual confusion—that the very idea of there being
such a property is corrupt.

Another general debate that the above characterization prompts is
whether the “non-objectivism clause” deserves to be
there. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, for example, thinks that moral realism
consists of endorsing just two claims: that moral judgments are truth
apt (cognitivism) and that they are often true (success theory). (See
Sayre-McCord 1986; also his entry for “moral realism” in
this encyclopedia.) His motivation for this is that to make
“mind-independence” a requirement of realism in
general would lead to counter-intuitive
implications. “Independence from the mental may be a plausible
requirement for realism when we're talking about macro-physical
objects but it's a non-starter when it comes to realism in psychology
(psychological facts won't be independent of the mental)” (1986:
3). Sayre-McCord is motivated by the desire for a realism/anti-realism
“template,” which can be applied with equal coherence to
any domain.

Two comments may be made against Sayre-McCord's proposal. First, note
the we don't expect a univocal account of it “realism”
across all uses. Consider, for example, the 19th-century French
realist art movement: what does it have in common with
Platonic realism about universals? We don't expect there to be a
common ground of commitments made by Courbet and Plato (say), yet we
hardly court confusion by calling them both
“realists”. Perhaps the same holds within the discipline
of philosophy. There may be little that David Brink's moral realism
and R. W. Sellars' perceptual critical realism have in common, yet
perhaps we may nonetheless legitimately call them both
“realists.” The costs of occasional confusion when moral
philosophers engage with other kinds of philosopher on the issue of
“realism” may be modest in comparison to the disorder that
would ensue within many disciplines if the traditional independence
clause were dropped entirely.

Second, it is not clear that maintaining the
“mind-independence” clause as a defining feature of the
realism/anti-realism division really does make psychological realism a
“non-starter.” Perhaps all that is needed is a more
careful understanding of the type of independence relation in
question. Certainly there is a trivial sense in which the truth or
falsity of a psychological claim like “Mary believes
that p” depends on a mental fact: whether Mary does
believe that p. On the other hand, there is also a sense in
which whether Mary has this belief is a mind-independent affair: The
fact of Mary's believing that p is not constituted or
determined by any of our practices of judging that she does so
believe. We could all judge that Mary believes that p and be
mistaken. Most people would accept that even Mary might be
mistaken about this—erroneously judging herself to believe
that p. In the same way, although the moral claim
“Mary's action was morally wrong” may be true only in
virtue of the pain that Mary's action caused (or because of Mary's
wicked intentions), this may not be the right kind of
mind-dependence to satisfy the non-objectivist clause.

In deference to the influence that Sayre-McCord's views have had on
recent metaethics, perhaps the judicious terminological decision is to
distinguish minimal moral realism—which denies (i) and
(ii)—from robust moral realism—which in addition
denies (iii). (See Rosen 1994 for this distinction.) In what follows,
however, “moral realism” will continue to be used to
denote the robust version.

It is widely assumed that moral realism enjoys some sort of
presumption in its favor that the anti-realist has to work to
overcome. Jonathan Dancy writes that “we take moral value to be
part of the fabric of the world; ... and we should take it in the
absence of contrary considerations that actions and agents do have the
sorts of moral properties we experience in them” (1986: 172). In
a similar vein, David McNaughton claims “The realist's
contention is that he has only to rebut the arguments designed to
persuade us that moral realism is philosophically untenable in order
to have made out his case” (1988: 40–41). David Brink concurs:
“We begin as (tacit) cognitivists and realists about
ethics. ... Moral Realism should be our metaethical starting point,
and we should give it up only if it does involve unacceptable
metaphysical and epistemological commitments” (1989: 23–24). Of
course, anyone can issue a burden-of-proof challenge;
philosophical opponents often trade blows in such terms, each trying
to shift the burden onto the other. But on occasion such challenges
are accepted; both parties acknowledge that one theory faces
a special challenge, that it has extra work to do. Here we are
interested in whether either moral realism or moral anti-realism bears
a burden of proof in this latter sense—that is, whether either
is widely acknowledged by both proponents and opponents to
have a presumption in its favor.

There are certainly instances of participants in this debate accepting
such prima facie burdens (and then attempting to discharge them). John
Mackie, for instance, acknowledges that since his moral error theory
“goes against assumptions ingrained in our thought and built
into some of the ways in which language is used, since it conflicts
with what is sometimes called common sense, it needs very solid
support” (1977: 35). He seems to be saying that the very fact
that it clashes with common sense represents a methodological handicap
for his brand of moral skepticism, and thus that the arguments in its
favor need to be even more convincing than do those of the opponent if
they are to command assent. It is not clear, however, that Mackie was
required to shoulder this burden. It appears that for any such charge
that one party bears the burden of proof, there is plenty of
argumentative space for denying the allegation.

We should delineate two ways that a philosophical position might bear
a “burden of proof.” First, there may be a consensus of
folk opinion (or “intuition”) that favors the opposing
view. Second, there may be a phenomenon, or range of phenomena, for
which the position in question appears to suffer a clear disadvantage
when it comes to offering an explanation. That these two are distinct
is brought out by considering that theory X might do a much
better job than theory Y of explaining phenomenon P,
even though X is more counter-intuitive
than Y. Perhaps Newtonian physics is more intuitive than
Einsteinian, but there are observable data—e.g., those gathered
during the famous solar eclipse experiments of 1919—that the
latter theory is much better equipped to explain.

In short, attempts to establish the burden of proof are as slippery
and indecisive in the debate between the moral realist and the moral
anti-realist as they tend to be generally in philosophy. The matter is
complicated by the fact that there are two kinds of burden-of-proof
case that can be pressed, and here they tend to pull against each
other. On the one hand, moral realists face a cluster of explanatory
challenges concerning the nature of moral facts (how they relate to
naturalistic facts, how we have access to them, why they have
practical importance)—challenges that simply don't arise for
either the noncognitivist or the error theorist. On the other hand, it
is widely assumed that intuitions strongly favor the moral
realist. This tension between what is considered to be
the intuitive position and what is considered to be the
empirically, metaphysically, and epistemologically defensible
position, motivates and animates much of the debate between the moral
realist and moral anti-realist.

Let us now discuss in turn the three specific forms of moral
anti-realism in more detail.

On the face of it, when we make a public moral judgment, like
“That act of stealing was wrong,” what we are doing is
asserting that the act of stealing in question instantiates a certain
property: wrongness. This raises a number of extremely thorny
metaethical questions: What kind of property is wrongness? How does it
relate to the natural properties instantiated by the action? How do we
have epistemic access to the property? How do we confirm whether
something does or does not instantiate the property? (And so on.) The
difficulty of answering such questions may lead one to reject the
presupposition that prompted them: One might deny that in making a
moral judgment we are engaging in the assignment of properties at
all. Such a rejection, roughly speaking, is the noncognitivist
proposal. Not only does the noncognitivist sidestep these nasty
puzzles, but may also claim the advantages of doing a better job of
explaining the apparent motivational efficacy of moral judgment (see
Stevenson 1937; Blackburn 1984; Smith 1994a: chapters 1–2),
of more readily accounting for certain aspects of moral disagreement
(e.g., its vehemence and intractability) (see Stevenson 1944; 1963:
essays 1 and 2), or of accommodating our unwillingness to defer to
moral experts (see McGrath 2008).

It is impossible to characterize noncognitivism in a way that will
please everyone. Etymologically speaking, moral noncognitivism is the
view that there is no such thing as moral knowledge. But it is rarely
considered in these terms. Traditionally, it is presented as the view
that moral judgments are neither true nor false. This characterization
is indeterminate and problematic in several ways. First, it leaves it
unclear what category of thing a “moral judgment” is; in
particular, is it a mental state or a linguistic entity? If moral
judgments are considered to be mental states, then noncognitivism is
the view that they are a type of mental state that is neither true nor
false, which is equivalent (most assume) to the denial that moral
judgments are beliefs. There are at least two ways of treating a moral
judgment as a type of “linguistic entity”: We could think
of it as a type of sentence (generally, one that involves a
moral predicate, such as “…is morally good” or
“…is evil”) or we could think of it as a type
of speech act. On the former disambiguation, noncognitivism
is the semantic view that moral judgments are a type of sentence that
is neither true nor false, which is equivalent (most assume) to saying
that the underlying grammar of the sentence—its logical
form—is such that it fails to express a proposition (in the same
way as, say, “Is the cat brown?” and “Shut the
door!” are sentences that fail to express propositions). On the
latter disambiguation, noncognitivism is the pragmatic view that moral
judgments are a type of speech act that is neither true nor false,
which is equivalent (most assume) to the denial that moral judgments
are assertions (i.e., the denial that moral judgments express belief
states). (For discussion of the semantic/pragmatic distinction, see
the entry on
pragmatics, section 4.) In all
cases, note, noncognitivism is principally a view of what moral
judgments are not—thus leaving open space for many
different forms of noncognitivism claiming what moral
judgments are.

There are also problems inherent in characterizing noncognitivism in
terms of truth value—if for no other reason than that there is
much deep and ongoing philosophical debate about the nature of truth
and the nature of truth value. There are number of reasons for
thinking that the category of “being neither true nor
false” does not align as neatly as often assumed with the
categories of “being something other than a belief” (when
applied to mental states) or “being something that does not
express a proposition” (when applied to sentence types) or
“being something other than an assertion” (when applied to
speech acts). For example, according to Strawson (1956), if someone
were today to utter “The present king of France is wise,”
she would have failed to say anything true or false, due to the
referential failure of the subject term of the sentence. Yet surely
the utterance is not barred from counting as an assertion, and surely
the speaker, if she falsely believes that there exists a present king
of France, can believe that he is wise. Similarly, it has frequently
been argued (though also frequently denied) that sentences manifesting
forms of sortal incorrectness (e.g., “The color of copper is
forgetful”) are neither true nor false; yet these too are,
arguably, assertible. It has also been claimed that vague predicates,
when applied to gray-area objects, result in sentences neither true
nor false; yet, again, such sentences seem assertible and
believable. None of these is an unproblematic position to adopt, but
together they at least indicate that it may be preferable to
characterize noncognitivism in a manner that does not make essential
reference to truth value gaps. There is also pressure in favor of this
decision coming from the other direction. It is not unusual for modern
versions of noncognitivism to acknowledge the possibility of moral
truth and moral falsity via an embrace of a minimalist theory of truth
(see Blackburn 1984, 1993a; Smith 1994b), according
to which if one is licensed in uttering a sentence
“S” with surface indicative grammar, then so too
is one licensed in uttering “‘S’ is
true.” Thus, regardless of whether the underlying grammar of the
sentence “Stealing is wrong” expresses a proposition,
regardless of whether the utterance of this sentence is typically used
to express a belief, so long as someone is licensed in uttering the
sentence then the appending of the truth predicate will not be
inappropriate.

But if we cease to characterize noncognitivism by reference to truth
value, how shall we do so? The above three characterizations can each
be revised so as to drop mention of truth values, as follows:

If moral judgments are considered to be mental states, then
noncognitivism is the denial that moral judgments are beliefs.

If moral judgments are considered to be sentence types, then
noncognitivism is the denial that moral judgments have an underlying
grammar that expresses a proposition.

If moral judgments are considered to be speech acts, then
noncognitivism is the denial that moral judgments are assertions.

How much progress this avoidance buys us remains to be seen. It would
not be unreasonable to characterize noncognitivism as the conjunction
of these three denials, though there would be something stipulative
about insisting upon this. In fact, generally these different strands
of noncognitivism simply aren’t sufficiently teased apart.

If moral judgments are taken to be mental states, but not beliefs,
then the likely contenders for being moral judgments are: desires,
emotions, attitudes, and, in general, some specifiable kind of
conative state. The noncognitivist may want to present something more
specific, such as (dis)approval, or desire that the
action in question (not) be performed, or subscription to a
normative framework [to be specified], or desire that
transgressors be punished, etc. The range of options is
open-ended.

If moral judgments are taken to be sentences, but ones whose
underlying grammar is not proposition-expressing, then the
noncognitivist must provide an account of the “true”
logical structure of the moral sentence which reflects this. One
traditionally dominant such form of noncognitivism once went by the
name “the Boo/Hurrah” theory; it is now known as
“emotivism.” According to this theory, the real meaning of
a sentence like “Stealing is wrong” is something like the
interjection “Stealing: Boo!” (It is important to
distinguish this view—according to which moral sentences
express one's feelings—from a view according to which
moral sentences report one's feelings. Expressing one's
disapproval toward X through saying “X:
yuk!” is different from asserting “I feel disapproval of
X.”) Another influential kind of noncognitivism called
“prescriptivism” claims that this sentence is really a
veiled command whose true meaning should be captured using the
imperative mood: “Don't steal!” (see Carnap 1935:
24–25). R.M. Hare (1952, 1963) restricted this to commands that one is
willing to universalize. Since there are many kinds of
non-proposition-expressing sentence, there are many such possibilities
for a noncognitivist. A certain kind of fictionalist might claim that
the real meaning of “Stealing is wrong” should be rendered
in the cohortative mood (which in English is not grammatically
distinguished from imperative): “Let's pretend that stealing is
wrong.” One might claim that the sentence really articulates a
wish: “Would that no one would steal!”
(optative-subjunctive mood). The thing to notice is that in all the
translation schemata offered (but one) the predicate “…is
wrong” gets translated away, thus obviating the philosophical
puzzles surrounding the need to explain the nature of moral
properties. This evasion of a cluster of thorny philosophical problems
represents noncognitivism's greatest theoretical attraction. (The one
view in which the predicate does not disappear is the fictionalist
offering, but here the predicate is embedded in a “Let's pretend
that…” context, thus removing any ontological commitment
to the instantiation or even existence of the property. This
fictionalist does, however, owe us some kind of account of what this
property would be like, in order that the content of the fiction can
be understood.)

If moral judgments are taken to be speech acts, but not
assertions, then the likely contenders for being moral judgments
appear very similar to those described under (ii): Moral judgments may
be used to express emotion, or to voice commands, or to initiate an
act of make-believe, or to express a wish, etc. The difference is that
this kind of noncognitivist sees these possibilities as in terms of
what moral language is used for, not as a matter of the
meaning or grammar of moral language, and thus has no need to offer a
translation schema into a different grammatical mood. (Whether one
uses the sentence “The frog was green” to make an
assertion or utters it with assertoric force withheld in the course of
telling a fairy tale, the meaning and grammar of the
sentence remain the same.) The critical (and often overlooked) point
is that assertion is not a grammatical or semantic
category. It makes no sense to ask whether the sentence “The
frog was green” is an assertion. It can certainly be used to
make an assertion, but it might also be uttered as a line of a play,
or dripping with tones of sarcasm, or as an example of a 4-word
English sentence—and in none of these cases would it be
asserted. The match between grammatical categories and speech acts is
a rough one. One can assert something not only using the indicative
mood, but also with the interrogative mood (“Is the pope
Catholic?” meaning Yes) or the imperative mood
(“Get outta here!” meaning No); one can command
something not only with the imperative mood, but also with the
interrogative mood (“Will you come here right now, young
man?”) or the optative-subjunctive mood (“Would that you
would come here!”); and so on. The noncognitivist making a claim
about the use of moral sentences (as opposed to a claim about their
meaning) can allow that the meaning of the sentence “Stealing is
wrong” is just what it appears to be (here she can accept
whatever the moral cognitivist says on the matter); but this
noncognitivist maintains that the primary usage of this sentence is
not to make an assertion, despite its being formed in the indicative
mood. Since there are a great many kinds of speech act other than
assertion (admonishing, commanding, exclaiming, promising, requesting,
pretending, warning, undertaking, etc., etc.)—and since no one
has yet proposed an exhaustive list—the noncognitivist has many
positive options. (For more on speech act theory, see Austin 1962;
Searle 1969.)

In short, the range of possible positive moral noncognitivist theories
is large, though the level of plausibility among the members will vary
greatly. (For futher discussion of noncognitivism, see the entry on
moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.)
Modern noncognitivism is widely
associated with the work of Blackburn, who also uses the terms
“projectivism” and “quasi-realism” for the
position he advocates. These three labels, however, can all be teased
apart.

Occasionally (though less so these days) one sees noncognitivism
characterized as the view that moral judgments are meaningless. This
is an inaccurate description, but it is instructive to recount why
someone might be led to assert it. One of the first clear statements
of moral noncognitivism came from Ayer in 1936. According to Ayer's
influential brand of logical positivism, all meaningful statements are
either analytic or empirically verifiable. Since moral utterances
appear to be neither, Ayer concluded that they were not meaningful
statements. But it does not follow that moral judgments are
meaningless. Ayer's preferred conclusion is that they are
not statements, but are, rather, ways of evincing one's
emotions and issuing commands. (Ayer did claim that the moral
predicates are not really predicates at all, that they do not pick out
properties, and thus that they cannot logically be
nominalized. Since wrongness, for Ayer, is a pseudo-concept,
it may reasonably be claimed that Ayer took the word
“wrongness,” and all other moral nouns, to be
meaningless.)

[Historical aside: though Ayer is often credited with the first clear
formulation of emotivism, it had been suggested to him earlier by
Austin Duncan-Jones. (Duncan-Jones did not publish anything on the
topic until his review of C.L. Stevenson's Ethics and
Language in Mind 54 (1945); however, his views were
described in C.D. Broad's article “Is goodness the name of a
non-natural quality?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 34 (1933–34).) Ayer admits his debt to Duncan-Jones in
his autobiography. Emotivism had also been clearly presented in
C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards' 1923 book The Meaning of
Meaning. Ogden and Richards write of a use of the word
“good” which is...

...a purely emotive use. When so used the word stands for
nothing whatsoever, and has no symbolic function. Thus, when we so use
it in the sentence, ‘This is good’, we merely refer to
this, and the addition of ‘is good’ makes no difference
whatever to our reference … it serves only as an emotive sign
expressing our attitude to this, and perhaps evoking similar attitudes
in other persons, or inciting them to actions of one kind or
another. (125)

Ayer later wrote: “I must confess that I had read The
Meaning of Meaning some years before I wrote Language, Truth
and Logic, but I believe that my plagiarism was
unconscious” (1984: 28). Ogden and Richards were in turn picking
up on a distinction between the denoting and emotive qualities of
language that can be traced back at least to Frege's 1897 essay
“Logic,” and even to J.S. Mill's 1843 System of
Logic (book 6). Stephen Satris (1987) tracks the Continental
origins of emotivism back to the work of Hermann Lotze in the 19th
Century.]

Noncognitivism is generally presented as a descriptive
characterization of moral thought or language, though occasionally it
is presented in a prescriptive spirit: It may be held that
moral cognitivism is as a matter of fact true, but that (for various
reasons) it would be a good idea if we changed our attitudes and/or
language in such a way that noncognitivism became true. (See
Joyce 2001; West 2010.)

If noncognitivism is defined as the negation of cognitivism—as a
theory about what moral judgments are not—then the two theories
are not just contraries but contradictories. However, a degree of
benign relaxation of criteria allows for the possibility of
“mixed” theories. If we consider noncognitivism not as a
purely negative thesis, but as a range of positive proposals, then it
becomes possible that the nature of moral judgments combines both
cognitivist and noncognitivist elements. For example, moral judgments
(as speech acts) may be two things: They may be
assertions and ways of issuing commands. (By analogy: To call
someone a “kraut” is both to assert that he is German and
to express a derogatory attitude toward people of this nationality.)
C.L. Stevenson held such a mixed view; for modern versions, see Copp
2001; Schroeder 2010 chapter 10; Svoboda 2011.

Understanding the nature of an error theory is best done initially by
example: It is the attitude that sensible people take toward
phlogiston, that levelheaded people take toward astrology, that
reasonable people take toward the Loch Ness monster, and that atheists
take toward the existence of gods. An error theorist doesn't believe
in such things; she takes talk of such things to be a load of
bunk. The moral error theorist doesn't believe in such things
as moral obligation, moral value, moral desert, moral virtue, and
moral permission; she takes talk of such things to be bunk. This much
allows one to get a fairly good intuitive grasp on the error theoretic
position, though the details of how the stance should best be made
precise are unresolved.

One might be tempted to express the error theory in negative existential terms:
as the view that X doesn't exist. Some qualifications may be
necessary depending on whether X is taken to be an object or
a property. If it is an object, the error theorist simply denies its
existence; but if it is a property it is somewhat less clear how to
articulate the error theorist's denial. Does she deny that the
property exists, or deny that it is instantiated at the actual world?
It is a task for metaphysicians to decide the best way that we should
speak of the status of the property of being phlogiston,
say. One might allow that the property exists—even that it
exists at the actual world—but deny that it is instantiated.

The problem with characterizing the error theory in negative
existential terms is that it doesn't distinguish the position from
noncognitivism, for the noncognitivist also denies that moral
qualities exist (discounting the linguistic permissions that may be
achieved via the quasi-realist program—see the supplementary
document
Projectivism and Quasi-realism.
The difference between the noncognitivist and the error theorist is that
the latter takes moral judgment as a mental phenomenon to be a matter
of belief, and moral judgment as a linguistic phenomenon to be
assertoric. Nobody thinks that when a 17th-century chemist said
“Phlogiston resides in combustible materials” he was doing
anything other than making an assertion; i.e., nobody is a
noncognitivist about 17th-century phlogiston discourse. But we think
that such assertions were systematically untrue, since there is no
phlogiston. Similarly, the moral error theorist thinks that moral
utterances are typically assertions (i.e., the error theorist is a
cognitivist) but they are systematically untrue, since there are no
moral properties to make them true. Strictly speaking, then, the
object of an error theoretic stance is a discourse: We are
error theorists about phlogiston discourse, not about phlogiston. In
practice, however, philosophers often describe the error theory in the
latter ontological manner, and this causes no obvious confusion. The
common phrase “an error theory about morality” fudges this
distinction.

Just as we obviously don't think that every sentence
containing the word “phlogiston” is untrue (consider
“Phlogiston doesn't exist” and “17th-century
chemists believed in phlogiston”), nor does the moral error
theorist hold that every sentence containing a moral term is
untrue; indeed, the use of such terms is surely essential to
articulating and advocating the error theory. Rather, the error
theorist focuses on a proper subset of sentences containing the
problematic terms: those that imply or presuppose the instantiation of
a moral property. “Stealing pears is morally wrong” will
be such a sentence; “Augustine believed that stealing pears is
wrong” will not be. Let us call such sentences “atomic
moral sentences.” The error theorist is typically characterized
as holding that all atomic moral sentences are false. (See Pigden
2010.) As a quick characterization this is probably adequate, but
speaking more carefully there may be grounds for revision. Consider,
say, discourse about Babylonian gods, and consider in particular those
sentences that imply or presuppose the existence of these gods (e.g.,
“Ishtar traveled to the underworld” but not “The
Babylonians believed that Ishtar traveled to the
underworld”). We rightly do not believe in Ishtar and all the
rest of the Babylonian pantheon, and this should make us error
theorists about this discourse. However, it is not obvious that a
sentence like “Ishtar traveled to the underworld” comes
out as false. As mentioned earlier, Strawson (1956) argued
that such a sentence—where the subject term suffers from
referential failure—is best considered neither true nor
false. Were we to adopt this Strawsonian view, we should not be forced
to accept noncognitivism about this erroneous discourse, for we saw in
section 3 several reasons for rejecting the popular characterization
of noncognitivism as the claim that moral judgments are neither true
nor false. We can both maintain the distinction between the error
theoretic position and noncognitivism, and accommodate the Strawsonian
complication, if the error theoretic position is defined as the view
that the relevant sentences of the discourse in question are, though
typically asserted, untrue.

Not only is endorsing a moral error theory consistent with the
continued use of moral terms (as in “Nothing is morally
wrong”), it is even consistent with the continued use of atomic
moral claims (such as “Stealing pears is wrong”). It is
typically assumed that the moral error theorist must be a
moral eliminativist: advocating the abolition of all atomic
moral sentences. But in fact what the error theorist decides
to do with the erroneous moral language is a matter logically
independent of the truth of the moral error theory. Perhaps the moral
error theorist will carry on asserting moral judgments although she
believes none of them—in which case she will be lying to her
audience (assuming her audience consists of moral believers). If lying
is a fault only in a moral sense, the error theorist may
remain unperturbed by this accusation. Or perhaps the moral error
theorist carries on uttering moral sentences but finds some way of
removing assertoric force from these utterances, in which case she is
not lying, and need not be committing a moral or epistemological sin
any more than does an actor reciting the lines of a play. (The error
theorist who advocates maintaining moral language in this way is a
kind of fictionalist. See Joyce 2001; Kalderon 2005; West 2010. See
the entry on
fictionalism.)
Such possibilities
suffice to show that the moral error theorist need not be an
eliminativist about moral language, and counter the popular assumption
that if we catch a professed moral error theorist employing moral talk
then we can triumphantly cry “Aha!” Furthermore, even if
it were true that by employing moral language the moral error theorist
opens herself to accusations of hypocrisy, disingenuousness, bad
faith, or vacillating between belief and disbelief, all such charges
amount to criticisms of her—and to suppose that this
somehow undermines the possibility of the moral error theory being
true is to commit an ad hominem fallacy.

Although one could be a moral error theorist by
implication—either because one endorses a radical global
error theory (thus being skeptical of morality along with modality,
colors, other minds, cats and dogs, etc.), or because one endorses an
error theory about all normative phenomena—typically the moral
error theorist thinks that there is something especially
problematic about morality, and does not harbor the same doubts about
normativity in general. The moral error theorist usually allows that
we can still deliberate about how to act, she thinks that we can still
make sense of actions harming or advancing our own welfare (and
others' welfare), and thus she thinks that we can continue to make
sense of various kinds of non-moral “ought”s, such as
prudential ones (see Joyce 2007). Thus the moral error theorist can
without embarrassment assert a claim like “One ought not harm
others,” so long as it is clear that it is not a moral
“ought” that is being employed. (In the same way, an
atheist can assert that one ought not covet one's neighbor's wife, so
long as it clear that this isn't an “…according to
God” prescription.)

Holding a moral error theoretic position does not imply any degree of
tolerance for those actions we generally abhor on moral
grounds. Although the moral error theorist will deny (when pressed in
all seriousness) that the Nazis' actions were morally wrong, she also
denies that they were morally right or morally permissible; she denies
that they were morally anything. This does not prevent her
from despising and opposing the Nazis' actions as vehemently as anyone
else. (See Joyce 2001, 2007; Garner 2010.) Thinking that the moral
error theorist must be “soft on crime” is like thinking
that the atheist must be.

Mackie, who coined the term “error theory” and advocated
the view most clearly (1977), described it as a form of “moral
skepticism.” Whether this label is acceptable depends on how
broad or specific a definition of “skepticism” is being
employed. If one thinks of skepticism as the state of being
unsure, then Mackie is no skeptic: his position is not one of
epistemic agnosticism with respect to moral claims, but rather of
positive disbelief. (He is an “atheist” about
morality, not an “agnostic.”) However, if one thinks of
skepticism as the claim that there is no moral knowledge, and,
moreover, thinks that a proposition must be true to be known,
then Mackie's denial of moral truth can properly be called
“skepticism.” (See the entry on
skepticism.) Even so, the moral error
theorist may still dislike the term “skeptic” for the
connotations it brings that her position is somehow to be defined in
opposition to a mainstream, and that she thus starts off shouldering a
burden of proof. (Even the term “anti-realist” may be
disliked for these reasons.) After all, if being
“skeptical” is used in one of its vernacular modes to
denote being in a state of disbelief, then the moral error
theorist is no more deserving of the label than the moral realist, for
the realist is a skeptic regarding the non-existence of moral
properties. (Cf. definition of “theist”: “One who
denies that God does not exist.”)

There are many possible routes to a moral error theory, and one
mustn't assume that the metaethical position is refuted if one
argumentative strategy in its favor falters. Perhaps the error
theorist thinks that for something to be morally bad (for example)
would imply or presuppose that human actions enjoy a kind of
unrestricted autonomy, while thinking that in fact the
universe supplies no such autonomy (see Caruso 2013; Blackmore
2013). Perhaps she thinks that for something to be morally bad would
imply or presuppose a kind of inescapable, authoritative imperative
against pursuing that thing, while thinking that in fact the universe
supplies no such imperatives (Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001; Olson 2011,
2014). Perhaps she thinks that for something to be morally bad would
imply or presuppose that human moral attitudes manifest a kind of
uniformity, while thinking that in fact attitudes do not converge
(Burgess [1978] 2007; see also Smith 1994a: 187–189, 2006,
2010). Perhaps she thinks that there exists no phenomenon whose
explanation requires that the property of moral badness be
instantiated, while thinking that explanatory redundancy is good
ground for disbelief (Hinckfuss 1987). Perhaps she thinks that tracing
the history of the concept moral badness back to its origins
reveals a basis in supernatural and magical forces and bonds—a
defective metaphysical framework outside which the concept makes no
sense (Anscombe 1958; Hägerström 1953; see Petersson
2011). Perhaps she is both a Divine Command Theorist and an
atheist. Perhaps she thinks all these things and more besides. Perhaps
she is impressed by a number of little or medium-sized considerations
against morality—none of which by itself would ground an error
theory, but all of which together constitute sufficient grounds for
skepticism.

Most opposition to the moral error theoretic position targets
particular arguments in its favor, and since the range of such
arguments is open-ended, so too is the opposition. Discussion has
focused heavily on Mackie's 1977 presentation, and in particular on
his two arguments in favor of the error theory: the Argument from
Relativity and the Argument from Queerness.

For discussion of Mackie's position, see papers in Honderich 1985 and
in Joyce & Kirchin 2010. See also Brink 1984; Garner 1990; Daly
& Liggins 2010; Miller 2013, ch.6; Olson 2011, 2014. It is
important to remember, however, that Mackie's are not the only, nor
necessarily the strongest, considerations in favor of the moral error
theory.

The typical argument for the error theory has two steps: the
conceptual and the ontological. First the error theorist tries to
establish that moral discourse is centrally committed to some
thesis X. The phrase “centrally committed” is
supposed to indicate that to deny X would be to cease to
participate competently in that discourse. Imagine a phlogiston
theorist who, upon hearing of the success of oxygen theory, claims
that his theory has been vindicated; he asserts that he has been
talking about oxygen all along but just by a different name. When the
important differences between the two substances are pointed out to
him (that phlogiston is stored in flammable materials and released
during combustion, while oxygen combines from the atmosphere with
flammable materials and is destroyed during combustion), he admits
that he's had some false beliefs about the nature of the substance,
but remains adamant that he was still talking about oxygen all
along. This seems unacceptable, roughly because the thesis
about being stored and released is a “central
commitment” of phlogiston talk; to deny this thesis with respect
to some substance is to cease to talk about phlogiston.

The ontological step of the error theorist's argument is to establish
that thesis X (whatever it may be) is false. This may be
achieved either through a priori means (demonstrating
X to be incoherent, say) or through a posteriori
methods (investigating the world and coming to the conclusion that
nothing satisfies X). Which method is appropriate depends on
the nature of the error that has been attributed to moral
discourse. Sometimes the moral error theorist will hold that there is
something impossible or incoherent about moral
properties, such that the error theory is necessarily true. But it
suffices for being an error theorist to hold that the
non-instantiation of moral properties is a merely contingent
affair. (Mackie, for example, though often interpreted in the former
way, seems to prefer the latter. He concedes that if theism were true,
then “a kind of objective ethical prescriptivity could be
introduced” (1977, p. 48), and, though an avowed atheist, Mackie
did not, apparently, maintain that theism is necessarily
false. Thus on the basis of this passage we must conclude that he took
the moral error theory to be only contingently true.)

The error theorist pressing this form of argument thus faces two kinds
of opponent. The challenger may acknowledge that the putatively
problematic attribute that the error theorist assigns to morality
really is problematic, but deny that this attribute is an essential
component of morality; a normative framework stripped of the
troublesome element will still count as a morality. Alternatively, the
opponent may accept that the putatively problematic attribute is a
non-negotiable component of anything deserving the name
“morality,” but deny that it really is problematic. So,
for example, if the error theorist claims that moral properties
require a kind of pure autonomy which the universe does not supply,
then one type of opponent will insist that morality requires nothing
of the sort, while another will insist that the universe does indeed
contain such autonomy.

The error theorist must be prepared to defend herself on both
fronts. This job is made difficult by the fact that it may be hard to
articulate precisely what it is that is so troubling about
morality. This failure need not be due to a lack of clear thinking or
imagination on the error theorist's part, for the thing that is
troubling her may be that there is something deeply mysterious about
morality. The moral error theorist may, for example, perceive that
moral imperatives are imbued with a kind of mystical practical
authority—a quality that, being mysterious, of
course cannot be articulated in terms satisfactory to an
analytic philosopher. Such an error theorist is forced to fall back on
vague metaphors in presenting her case: Moral properties have a
“to-be-pursuedness” to them (Mackie 1977: 40), moral facts
would require that “the universe takes sides” (Burgess
[1978] 2007), moral believers are committed to “demands as real
as trees and as authoritative as orders from headquarters”
(Garner 1994: 61), and so on. Indeed, it may be the vague, equivocal,
quasi-mystical, and/or ineliminably metaphorical imponderabilia of
moral discourse that so troubles the error theorist. (See Hussain
2004.)

Even if the error theorist can articulate a clear and determinate
(putatively) problematic feature of morality, the dispute over whether
this quality should count as a “non-negotiable component”
of morality has a tendency to lead quickly to impasse, for there is no
accepted methodology for deciding when a discourse is “centrally
committed” to a given thesis. What is needed is a workable model
of the identity criteria for concepts (allowing us confidently to
either affirm or deny such claims as “The concept of moral
obligation is the concept of an institution-transcendent
requirement”)—but we have no such model, and there is no
consensus even on what approximate shape such a model would take. It
is also possible that the most reasonable account of conceptual
content will leave many concepts with significantly indistinct
borders. There may simply be no fact of the matter about whether the
concept of moral obligation is, or is not, the concept of an
institution-transcendent requirement (for example). Thinking along
these lines, David Lewis makes use of the distinction between speaking
strictly and speaking loosely: “Strictly speaking, Mackie is
right: genuine values would have to meet an impossible condition, so
it is an error to think there are any. Loosely speaking, the name may
go to a claimant that deserves it imperfectly … What to make of
the situation is mainly a matter of temperament” (Lewis [1989]
2000: 93).

Lewis's own temperament leads him to want to vindicate moral
discourse, and he thinks that this can be done by supporting a kind of
dispositional theory of value. He argues that certain dispositional
properties, properly understood, are adequate contenders for being
identified with values, and he applies this account to the moral realm
(Lewis 2005: 320), thus defending the existence of moral facts (though
not mind-independent moral facts). But he admits that this works only
if one is willing to “speak loosely” about morality. If,
on the other hand, one insists on speaking strictly, then
(Lewis admits) one is forced to acknowledge that there are desiderata
of moral values (such as the authoritative practical oomph that Mackie
goes to such efforts to articulate) that these dispositions do not
satisfy. And what is wrong with insisting on speaking strictly, or
wrong with antecedently preferring to support theories that disrupt
and challenge rather than vindicate ordinary belief systems? Nothing,
according to Lewis. If this is correct, then the dispute between the
moral error theorist and her many detractors may in fact be
fundamentally undecidable—there may simply be no fact of the
matter about who is correct. (See Joyce 2012.)

To deny both noncognitivism and the moral error theory suffices to
make one a minimal moral realist. Traditionally, however, moral
realism has required the denial of a further thesis: the
mind-dependence of morality. There is no generally accepted label for
theories that deny both noncognitivism and the moral error theory but
maintain that moral facts are mind-dependent; here I shall use the
term “non-objectivism.” Thus, “moral
non-objectivism” denotes the view that moral facts exist and are
mind-dependent (in the relevant sense), while “moral
objectivism” holds that they exist and are
mind-independent. (Note that this nomenclature makes the two
contraries rather than contradictories; the error theorist and the
noncognitivist count as neither objectivists nor non-objectivists. The
error theorist may, however, be an objectivist in a different sense:
in holding that moral facts are conceptually objective
facts.) Let us say that if one is a moral cognitivist and a
moral success theorist and a moral objectivist, then one is a
robustmoral realist. In
this section, the third condition will be discussed.

Yet this third condition, even more than the first two, introduces a
great deal of messiness into the dialectic, and the line between the
realist and the anti-realist becomes obscure (and, one might think,
less interesting). The basic problem is that there are many
non-equivalent ways of understanding the relation
of mind-(in)dependence, and thus one philosopher's realism
becomes another philosopher's anti-realism. At least one philosopher,
Gideon Rosen, is pessimistic that the relevant notion of objectivity
can be sharpened to a useful philosophical point:

To be sure, we do have “intuitions” of a sort about when
the rhetoric of objectivity is appropriate and when it isn't. But
these intuitions are fragile, and every effort I know to find the
principle that underlies them collapses. We sense that there
is a heady metaphysical thesis at stake in these debates over realism
… [b]ut after a point, when every attempt to say just what the
issue is has come up empty, we have no real choice but to conclude
that despite all the wonderful, suggestive imagery, there is
ultimately nothing in the neighborhood to discuss. (1994:
279. See also Dworkin 1996.)

As Rosen says,
metaphors to mark subjectivism from objectivism are easy to come by
and easy to motivate in the uninitiated. The objectivist about
X likens our X-oriented activity to astronomy,
geography, or exploration; the subjectivist likens it to sculpture or
imaginative writing. (These are Michael Dummett's metaphors (1978:
xxv).) The objectivist sees the goal of our inquiries as being to
“carve the beast of reality at the joints” (as the popular
paraphrase of Plato's Phaedrus puts it); the subjectivist
sees our inquiries as the application of a “cookie
cutter”: imposing a noncompulsory conceptual framework onto an
undifferentiated reality (to use Hilary Putnam's equally memorable
image (1987: 19)). The objectivist sees inquiry as a process of
detection, our judgments aiming to reflect the
extension of the truth predicate with respect to a certain subject;
the subjectivist sees inquiry as a process of projection, our
judgments determining the extension of the truth predicate
regarding that subject.

The claim “X is mind-(in)dependent” is certainly
too coarse-grained to do serious work in capturing these powerful
metaphors; it is, perhaps, better thought of as a slogan or as a piece
of shorthand. There are two conspicuous points at which the phrase
requires precisification. First, we need to decide what exactly the
word “mind” stands for. It can be construed strictly and
literally, to mean mental activity, or it can be understood
in a more liberal manner, to include such things as conceptual
schemes, theories, methods of proof, linguistic practices,
conventions, sentences, institutions, culture, means of epistemic
access, etc. Were the moral facts to depend on any of these
anthropocentric things, the anti-realist imagery of moral judges qua
inventors may seem more apt than that of moral judges qua
discoverers. Second, we need to decide what kind of relation is
denoted by “(in)dependent.” Consider the following
possibilities, concerning any of which it might be claimed that it
makes goodness depend on mental activity (in this case, for
simplicity, John's attitude of approval):

X is good iff John approves of X

X is good iff John would approve of X (in
such-and-such circumstances)

X is good iff X merits John's approval

The catalog can be made longer, depending on whether the
“iff” is construed as necessary or contingent,
conceptual, a priori, or a posteriori.

To illustrate further the ubiquity of and variation among
mind-dependence relations on the menu of moral theories, consider the
following:

According to classic utilitarianism, one is obligated to act so as
to maximize moral goodness, and moral goodness is identical to
happiness. Happiness is a mental phenomenon.

According to Kant, one's moral obligations are determined by which
maxims can be consistently willed as universal laws; moreover, the
only thing that is good in itself is a good will. Willing is a mental
activity, and the will is a mental faculty.

According to John Rawls (1971), fairness is determined by the
results of an imaginary collective decision, wherein self-interested
agents negotiate principles of distribution behind a veil of
ignorance. Decision-making, negotiation, and agency all require mental
activity.

According to Michael Smith (1994a), the morally right
action for a person to perform is determined by what advice would be
given to that person by her epistemically and rationally idealized
counterpart. (See also Railton 1986.) Epistemic improvement and
rational improvement are mental phenomena.

According to Richard Boyd (1988), moral goodness is identical to a
cluster of properties conducive to the satisfaction of human needs,
which tend to occur together and promote each other. Human needs may
not all be mental, but the needs that depend in no way on the
existence of mental activity are surely few.

According to Frank Jackson (1998), ethical terms pick out
properties that play a certain role in the conceptual network
determined by mature folk morality. “The folk” necessarily
have minds, and the relevant process of “maturing” is
presumably one that implicates a variety of psychological events.

Indeed, it is difficult to think of a serious version of moral success
theory for which the moral facts depend in no way on mental
activity. Yet to conclude that the distinction between minimal and
robust realism cannot be upheld would be hasty. Many metaethicists who
reject noncognitivism and the error theory, and thus count as minimal
realists, continue to define their position (often under the label
“constructivism”) in contrast to a realist view. (See
Bagnoli 2002; Ronzoni 2010; Street 2010, 2012. See also the entry on
constructivism in metaethics.)
The challenge is to pick among the various
mind-(in)dependence relations in the hope of drawing a distinction
that is philosophically interesting and meshes satisfactorily with our
preexisting philosophical taxonomy, such that some success theorists
count as realists and some do not. Whether this aspiration can be
satisfied remains to be seen, and thus Rosen's challenge is a real
one. Answering this challenge is certainly not something that is
aspired to here, though some preliminary thoughts will be offered.

There are unquestionably forms of mind-dependence that need to be
excluded. Consider 21st-century global warming, and assume, as the
scientific consensus declares, that this phenomenon is caused largely
by human activity. The activities in question—driving vehicles,
heavy industry, etc.—are largely intentional behaviors, hence
had our minds been different—had humanity been inclined to lead
a pastoral existence involving solar electricity and lots of
bicycles—there would be no global warming. Thus the sentence
“Global warming is occurring” is true thanks in part to
human minds. And, indeed, to the extent that our actions might yet
still reverse the phenomenon of global warming, by changing our minds
we can render the sentence false. Yet, for all this, there certainly
would seem to be something wrongheaded in claiming that global warming
is “just subjective.” The straightforward kind
of causal connection between mental activity and global
warming (or, for that matter, airplanes, books, computers,
drycleaners, etc.) is evidently not the right kind of mind-dependence
that determines the objectivism/non-objectivism divide.

Compare a different case. Suppose I have a nugget of gold in one hand
and a thousand dollar bill in the other. Let us say that it is a fact
that (here and now) the nugget of gold is worth the same as the
rectangular flat object, just as it is a fact that the thing in my
left hand is made of metal and the thing in my right hand is made of
paper. Yet the status of these facts seems different. The former
fact, concerning the comparative value of the held objects, is not
merely causally dependent on human mental activity, but seems
somehow sustained and perhaps even constituted by that activity. Were
the relevant authorities to decide that the nugget is worth twice the
piece of paper, then it would cease to be true that they are worth the
same—and it would, plausibly, cease to be true
immediately, not via this decision having set into motion
various worldly events that will eventually cause the value to
change. By comparison, were we all to come to believe that the nugget
is not made of gold, or that the rectangular flat object is
not made of paper, this would have no effect on material
constitution of the items. Were we all to die tomorrow, the nugget
would carry on being made of gold, the flat rectangular object would
carry on being made out of paper, but it would cease to be true that
the nugget of gold is worth the same as the thousand dollar bill.

But this is all more suggestive than edifying. The exact nature of the
mind-dependence relation exemplified by the value-of-gold example is
obscure, and it remains to be seen whether this relation would be a
reasonable explication of the one invoked by moral
non-objectivists. Rosen would doubt that the example illustrates a useful
notion of mind-dependence at all. His argument might be
reconstructed as follows. First, we need to avoid being distracted by
the indexical elements, so let us consider the sentence “Nugget
of gold X is worth the same as this piece of paper Y, at noon, January
1, 2014, in the USA.” Rosen would argue that investigating
whether this sentence is true should be a perfectly straightforward
empirical pursuit, that in no sense have we abrogated “the
Realist's rhetoric of objectivity, already-thereness, discovery and
detection” (293). An anthropologist from another world who
wanted to know whether the sentence is true would set about
investigating a set of sociological facts; from the anthropologist's
perspective, facts about the monetary value of gold are mind-dependent
“only in the sense that they supervene directly on facts about
our minds … [but] this has no tendency to undermine their
objectivity” (302).

It is, of course, a truism that whenever one can talk of something's
being invented, talk of discovery comes along for free, for it is
always possible for someone else to make discoveries about any act of
invention. (One could discover that the pavlova dessert was invented
in Australia rather than New Zealand.) But it would be a mistake to
allow this platitude to lead us to doubt that a distinction can be
upheld, for although invention-talk entails the possibility of
discovery-talk, the reverse is not true. (The chemical constitution of
Jupiter is something we discover and is in no sense invented by
anyone.) One might, therefore, still contrast non-objective
facts—for which the imageries of both invention and discovery
are available—with objective facts—for which only the
imagery of discovery is appropriate. It might be complained that this
distinction is somehow metaphysically uninteresting, but, even if this
is true, it might nevertheless be a distinction that (for whatever
reason) metaethicists choose to employ as a guiding piece of basic
taxonomy. And indeed it would seem that by and large they do. The
conviction that there is a distinction between objectivist and
non-objectivist accounts of moral facts motivates a great deal of
metaethical debate.

One popular way of clarifying the mind-dependence relation is to see
certain properties and/or concepts
as response-dependent. (In the interests of brevity
and of bringing some varying theories into conformity, in what follows
I reluctantly fudge the distinction between whether the issue concerns
concepts or properties.) Roderick Firth's version of ideal observer
theory (1952) is a good example of such a theory, but in more recent
times the idea has been discussed at length by Mark Johnston (1989,
1991, 1992, 1993), David Lewis ([1989] 2000), Crispin Wright
(1988b), Philip Pettit (1991), and Ralph Wedgwood
(1997). There are different formulations, but Johnston's can be considered canonical.

For Johnston, a property is response-dependent if it can be
“adequately represented only by concepts whose conditions of
application essentially involve conditions of human response”
(Johnston 1991: 143). Response-dependent concepts are understood as
follows:

Concept F = the concept of the disposition to
produce R in S under C

where R is some response that essentially involves mental
activity, S is some subject or group of subjects,
and C are some specified conditions under which R is
produced in S. (Further, it is stipulated that this identity
may not hold trivially in virtue of R or S
or C being given a “whatever it takes”
specification (e.g., the concept cat = the concept of the
disposition to produce the response “It's a cat” in
perfect cat-spotters in optimal cat-spotting conditions).)

Johnston denies that our moral concepts are in fact
response-dependent. He thinks that we should adopt an error theory
about our actual defective response-independent moral
discourse. However, he believes that we have available to us an array
of response-dependent “surrogate” moral concepts regarding
which we may hold a success theory. Echoing Lewis on speaking strictly
versus loosely, Johnston claims that “ever so inclusively
speaking” the moral error theorist is correct; but “more
or less inclusively speaking” moral values exist. (These phrases
are from his 1992 paper concerning color, but he makes it
quite clear in his 1989 and 1993 articles that the same pattern is
supposed to hold for moral value.) I will not discuss the details of
Johnston's version here, but to note the general point that the
acceptability of the surrogates must depend on how “close”
they are to the original response-independent concepts. One may grant
that nothing satisfies all of our desiderata regarding moral
concepts, but the question remains whether any response-dependent
concepts will satisfy enough of those desiderata to count as
worthy and practicable surrogates.

Response-dependent concepts may or may not be relativistic:
“S” may be replaced by an indexical (e.g.,
“us”) or by a non-indexical referring term (e.g.,
“Julius Caesar”). An example of a relativistic
response-dependent moral theory is Jesse Prinz's (2007), while an
example of a non-relativistic response-dependent moral theory is
Firth's (1952) ideal observer theory. Here I will
focus on the latter. Put in Johnston's terms, Firth's analysis of
moral goodness is as follows:

The concept moral goodness = the concept of the disposition
to produce approval in the ideal observer (in adequate viewing
conditions)

The ideal observer is defined as having the following characteristics:
He is omniscient with respect of the non-ethical facts,
omnipercipient, disinterested, dispassionate, consistent, and in all
other respects normal. See Firth 1952 for discussion of these
qualities; see also Brandt 1954 and Firth 1954. (Note that Firth
doesn't actually mention “viewing conditions,” since all
the necessary properties are attributed to the observer himself. Often
it doesn't make any difference whether a quality is predicated of the
subject or the viewing conditions—e.g., the two descriptions
“the approval felt by a fully-informed agent” and
“the approval felt by an agent in circumstances that provide him
with full information” are co-referential. I have here
harmlessly included the parenthetical reference to “adequate
viewing conditions” just to bring Firth's analysis more
explicitly into line with Johnston's format.)

Not only is Firth's analysis non-relativistic (since it contains no
ineliminable indexical element), but it is also, he declares,
objectivist. He claims this on the grounds that it construes ethical
statements in such a way that it is not the case “that they
would all be false by definition if there existed no experiencing
subjects (past, present, or future)” (1952: 322). In other
words, Firth draws the objectivist/non-objectivist line according to an
existential dependence that holds “by definition.” This
claim to a certain kind of objectivity is a feature of all
response-dependence theories. Response-dependent properties do not
depend for their instantiation on the existence of a single conscious
entity in the whole universe; what they depend upon is the presence of
a disposition. Just as a vase may remain fragile in virtue of
having a disposition to break (in C) even if it never has
been, and never will be, broken, so too the disposition to produce
R in S in C may be instantiated even if no
token of R ever occurs (past, present or future), no token of
S ever exists (past, present or future), and no token of
C ever obtains (past, present or future). Thus Firth's theory
at no point implies that any character with the idealized qualities
exists.

Advocates of response-dependent theories for moral properties/concepts
are eager to make much of this claim to objectivity. Pettit (1991)
sets out to reassure realists that embracing response-dependency will
upset little of their traditional desiderata, while Johnston claims
that response-dependency promises to be a good candidate “for an
appropriately qualified realism” (1993: 106). Nevertheless,
although analyzing morality in a response-dependent manner without
doubt makes morality existentially mind-independent, it with
equal certainty renders it conceptually mind-dependent. And
this may be enough to leave those with realist leanings
uneasy. Although it may be true that the non-objectivist has
traditionally expressed her commitments by reference to an existential
relation, this may simply be due to the paucity of well-formed
alternatives having been articulated in that
tradition. Once conceptual mind-dependence is elucidated, the
realist may find herself equally opposed. After all, in a sense all
that has been altered is a modal variable: Instead of

X is good iff the ideal observer approves of X,

we have

X is good iff the ideal observer would approve of X.

If one's opposition to the former was based on an intuitive hostility
to the mind-dependence relation it embodies, it seems unlikely that
the tweaking of that relation in the manner of the latter will make
one less inclined to balk.

Firth's and Johnston's versions of a response-dependent morality may
be categorized as non-normative, in contrast with a rather
different way of understanding the response-dependent
relation. Normative response-dependent theories of morality (also
known as “fitting attitude accounts”) claim something like
the following:

The concept moral goodness = the concept of something's
warranting R in S under C

The key change is the presence of the normative notion
of warranting (or meriting or justifying or
some such similar notion). The principal challenge for such theories
is to explicate this normative notion in a non-circular way that does
not undermine the need for a response-dependent theory in the first
place. Normative response-dependent theories are advocated by
McDowell 1985, Wiggins 1987, and McNaughton 1988.

A quite different way of drawing the objective/non-objective distinction
comes from Crispin Wright (1992). He discriminates between phenomena
that play a wide cosmological role and those that
play only a narrow role. A subject matter has wide cosmological role
if the kinds of things with which it deals figure in a variety of
explanatory contexts—specifically, if they explain things other
than (or other than via) our judgments concerning them. So, for
example, the rectangular shape of my door can explain many things: my
tendency to think “The door is rectangular,” the shape of
the shadow it casts, the absence of drafts in the office when the door
is shut, etc. By comparison, something with narrow cosmological role
fails to figure in explanations except concerning our
judgments. Perhaps funniness is such a property. It need not
be denied that there are facts about which things have this property,
but it is hard to imagine that the funniness of something can explain
the occurrence of any other phenomenon in the world without our
tendencies to think it funny playing an intermediary role.

Wright doubts that moral facts have wide cosmological role, and
thus—in this respect at least—comes down on the side of
the moral anti-realist (1992: 197-8). It must be noted, however, that
Wright's broader project is to establish a certain
complex pluralism regarding realism and objectivity, and thus
he allows that there are other equally valid objective/non-objective
partitions (which won't be discussed here) that may tilt matters back
in the moral realist's favor. (For another pluralistic approach to
realism, see Pettit 1991.)

There are other ways one might try to cash out the
objective/non-objective distinction in a manner that makes interesting sense
of the traditional realist/anti-realist division in the moral
realm. One might, for example, understand moral objectivity using the
template provided by Michael Dummett (1978 and 1993): Atomic moral
sentences are such that, though we think of them as determinately true
or false, we nevertheless know of no method that represents either a
proof or a disproof of such sentences; they are potentially
“recognition transcendent.” The robust moral realist,
accordingly, would think that a sentence like “Stealing is
morally wrong” is either true or false, but that its truth value
potentially outruns any means we know of for ascertaining it. There
are several objections to this way of understanding realism (see
Devitt 1991), but perhaps the most salient in the present context is
that many philosophers who think of themselves as robust moral
realists—and, indeed, are categorized so by such a consensus of
their fellows that they must be considered almost canonical examples
of the view—would reject Dummett's semantic construal.

One important thing to notice about these ways of drawing the
objective/non-objective distinction is that they promise to defuse
Sayre-McCord's contention that “mind-dependence” has no
place as a criterion of anti-realism since it would make psychological
realism a non-starter (see section 1). Suppose what is under
contention is a mental state like pain. Consider, first, non-objectivism
as response-dependence. Perhaps a response-dependent account of pain
could be advocated, but it certainly doesn't seem mandatory (to say
the least). Even if it were true that for any x, x
is in pain if and only x believes/judges/etc. herself to be
in pain, it would not follow that the concept pain is
response-dependent. Therefore, under these terms the debate between
the pain objectivist and the pain non-objectivist (and, more broadly, the
psychological realist and the psychological anti-realist) can be a
substantive one. Consider, second, non-objectivism as narrow cosmological
role. It suffices here to note that pain may or may not have wide
cosmological role—the question requires delicate
discussion—therefore, again, psychological anti-realism is by no
means trivially excluded just in virtue of the subject matter in
question concerning a psychological phenomenon. Consider, last,
non-objectivism in Dummettian terms. It is not trivially false that
sentences of the form “X is in pain” are
determinately true or false but potentially “recognition
transcendent,” therefore it is not trivially the case that such
sentences fail Dummett's test of objectivity, therefore the
non-objectivism clause, so understood, does not render psychological
realism a “non-starter,” as Sayre-McCord fears.

So many debates in philosophy revolve around the issue
of objectivity versus non-objectivity that one may be
forgiven for assuming that someone somewhere understands this
distinction. There certainly exists a widespread intuitive imagery
associated with the duality that is sufficiently vivid to motivate
heartfelt philosophical commitments, but, once approached directly,
the distinction nevertheless proves extremely difficult to nail
down. It is likely that part of what is causing confusion is that
there are a number of non-equivalent ways of drawing the distinction,
some of which are better suited to certain subject areas than
others. Expecting a monolithic theory that applies to all cases is
probably an unreasonable aspiration. Perhaps, in the end, Rosen's
pessimism will be borne out, in which case we will face a choice about
how to confront the realism/anti-realism debate: Either we can go
Sayre-McCord's route—dropping the muddled non-objectivism clause
from our understanding of anti-realism (thus insisting that minimal
realism is the only realism there is)—or we can accept that the
weight of tradition makes non-objectivism an essential component of
anti-realism, thus acknowledging that the realism/anti-realism debate
is itself muddled (thus, presumably, adopting Rosen's quietist
attitude). But either conclusion, at present, seems premature, since
there is enough interesting work on the topic underway to provide hope
that sensible and viable versions of the objectivism/non-objectivism
distinction may yet be drawn up.

One further comment that should be made is to voice the suspicion that
much of the knee-jerk opposition to non-objectivism is based on an
impoverished understanding of the kind of resources available to a
sophisticated non-objectivist. It is often assumed that “moral
non-objectivism” must denote a kind of lumpish relativism according
to which whatever sentiments an individual happens to have determine
the moral truth for that person; it is often assumed that moral
non-objectivism would therefore render incoherent the ideas of moral
improvement, moral criticism, and moral disagreement. It is feared
that such a stance would force upon us a kind of tolerance of
all manner of undesirable behaviors, from acts of rudeness to Nazi
atrocities.

There is much that is confused in such apprehensions. Moral
non-objectivism is not the view the wrongness of genocide, say,
is just a matter of opinion (in the way that preferring
chocolate ice cream over vanilla is a matter of opinion), and an undue
focus on that sort of silly subjectivism—whether explicitly or
tacitly and unthinkingly—has injected a fair degree of
straw-mannishness into proceedings. Moral non-objectivism need not be
relativistic
(see the supplementary document
Moral Objectivity and Moral Relativism),
and even when it is so, it need not be tied to the whims of
the individual. There are sophisticated versions of moral relativism
that make sense of moral improvement, moral criticism, and moral
disagreement (see Harman 1975, 1996; Wong 2006; Prinz
2007). Furthermore (as has been noted on numerous occasions), there is
no obvious route from relativism—no matter how rampant—to
an attitude of tolerance. If relativism is true, then the value of
tolerance is no more absolute than any other. Consider a kind of
tolerance we think desirable: say, allowing other adults to decide
what clothes they will wear. If I happen to find myself with
sentiments in favor of this kind of tolerance, then, according to
naive individualistic moral relativism, it is true (relative
to me) that choosing one's own clothes is permissible. Were I,
however, to find myself with vehemently intolerant attitudes toward
other people's clothing autonomy, an individualistic moral relativism
would be no less supportive of my values. (Indeed, if someone were to
say to me “You should be more tolerant of people's choice of
dress; don't you know that moral relativism is true?”,
relativism would provide me with the resources to counter “But
my perspective happens to be an intolerant one, and there is no
perspective-transcendent viewpoint from which this point of view may
be legitimately criticized.”) Alternatively, consider a kind of
tolerance we think
undesirable: say, that of feeling no compulsion to take
action against Nazi genocide. If I happen to find myself with
sentiments opposed to this kind of tolerance—if I think that
Nazi savagery is a crime that must be prevented by extreme
intervention—then, according to naive individualistic moral
relativism, it is true (relative to me) that an indifferent
attitude toward Nazism is unacceptable. Were I, however, to find
myself unresponsive when confronted with Nazi genocidal
programs—were I, indeed, to find myself with sympathetic
leanings—an individualistic moral relativism would be no less
supportive of my values. In short, whether we are drawn to relativism
in the hope that it will encourage desirable kinds of tolerance, or we
are repelled by relativism for fear that it will promote undesirable
kinds of tolerance, both the hope and the fear are misplaced.

This entry has not attempted to adjudicate the rich and noisy debate
between the moral realist and moral anti-realist, but rather has
attempted to clarify just what their debate is about. But even this
much more modest task is doomed to lead to unsatisfactory results, for
there is much confusion—perhaps a hopeless
confusion—about how the terms of the debate should be drawn
up. It is entirely possible that when subjected to acute critical
examination, the traditional dialectic between the moral realist and
the moral anti-realist will crumble into a bunch of evocative
metaphors from which well-formed philosophical theses cannot be
extracted. If this is true, it would not follow that metaethics is
bankrupt; far from it—it may be more accurate to think that
modern metaethics has prospered to such an extent that the old terms
no longer fit its sophisticated landscape.

But for present, at least, the terms “moral realist” and
“moral anti-realist” seem firmly entrenched. With so much
ill-defined, however, it would seem close to pointless to conduct
metaethical debate under these terms. If someone tells us
that she is a moral cognitivist then we comprehend, roughly, what she
means. If someone presents an argument designed to support a moral
error theory then we know what to expect. If someone articulates an
objection to the ideal observer theory then we understand what we are
dealing with. But if someone purports to be a moral anti-realist, or a
moral realist, then although we can immediately exclude certain
possibilities, a great deal of indeterminacy remains. This latitude
means that the terms “moral realist” and “moral
anti-realist” are free to be bandied with rhetorical
force—more as badges of honor or terms of abuse (as the case may
be) than as useful descriptive labels. Rather like tiresome arguments
over whether some avant-garde gallery installation does or does not
count as “art ” taxonomic bickering over whether a given
philosopher is or is not a “moral realist” is an activity
as unsightly as it is fruitless.

Just as important as gaining a clear and distinct understanding of
these labels is gaining an appreciation of what of real consequence
turns on the debate. This seems particularly pressing here because a
natural suspicion is that much of the opposition to moral anti-realism
develops from a nebulous but nagging practical concern about what
might happen—to individuals, to the community, to
social order—if moral anti-realism, in one guise or another,
were widely adopted. The embrace of moral anti-realism, it is assumed,
will have a pernicious influence. This concern presupposes that most
of the folk are already pretheoretically inclined toward
moral realism—an assumption that was queried in the supplementary
document
Moral Anti-realism vs. Realism: Intuitions.
But even if it is true that most people are naive moral
realists, the question of what would happen if they ceased to be so is
an empirical matter, concerning which neither optimism nor pessimism
seems prima facie more warranted than the other. As with the
opposition to moral non-objectivism, the opposition to moral anti-realism
is frequently based on an under-estimation of the resources available
to the anti-realist—on an unexamined assumption that the
silliest, crudest, and/or most insidious version will stand as a good
representative of a whole range of extremely varied and often
sophisticated theories.

West, C., 2010. “Business as usual? The error theory,
internalism, and the function of morality,” in R. Joyce and
S. Kirchin (eds.), A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s
Moral Error Theory, Dordrecht: Springer: 183–198.